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Summary
Democrats currently hold a narrow and fragile advantage over Donald Trump in Florida, a perennial swing state that will be all but essential to a Trump Electoral College victory in November 2020. True to form, we project the race for president in Florida to be extremely tight, but new polling from Priorities USA shows that Democrats can press their advantage, particularly with voters who aren’t seeing the benefits of Trump’s economy.
Our prior battleground polling has shown how the state of the national economy provides the president a lifeline, giving many voters something positive to say about him, despite disapproving of his handling of a host of other issues. Priorities’ first battleground poll of the 2020 cycle shows that Florida is no exception: Donald Trump’s approval on the economy runs significantly ahead of his overall job approval. Even so, six in ten Florida voters (61%) say they have not personally benefited much, if at all, from Donald Trump’s economic policies. Moreover, few voters believe Donald Trump has done things to reverse the rising cost of health care or help Americans keep up with the cost of living. This is a significant opportunity for Democrats, but requires a major investment in time and resources to communicate. While voters are open to arguments that the president’s agenda has worsened these problems, they are not yet convinced. On the issue of “wages and income falling behind the cost of living” only a third (31%) believe Trump is making the problem worse, while another 35% are unsure what he is doing or think it’s having little impact either way. On the “high cost of health care” an even larger segment of the Florida electorate (42%) give a mixed or neutral assessment.
Florida will be closely contested, and Democrats must continue to make the case that Donald Trump’s agenda is leaving middle-class Americans and working families behind. If Democrats don’t make this case in earned and paid media, many voters may be inclined to give the president the benefit of the doubt on the core issue of the economy and he will once again win the state.
Persuasion and Turnout in Florida
The 2020 election in Florida is going to be close. Donald Trump won Florida by less than 120,000 votes in 2016, and in 2018, Republicans very narrowly won an open seat for Governor and defeated a sitting Democratic senator. And now, against a generic Democratic candidate for president, Donald Trump trails by just four points: 45% for the Democrat, 41% for the president, with 14% undecided. This slight deficit reflects voters’ overall opinion of the president, who receives 48% job approval (while 52% disapprove) – despite 56% approval (while 44% disapprove) on his handling of the economy.
Our poll identified a 16% share of voters who either started out undecided, or switched sides during the survey, which included messaging. Many of these “persuadable” voters did not vote in Florida in 2016, but those who did are a mostly Trump-friendly group, with 48% backing then-candidate Trump and just 26% backing Clinton, underscoring how the four-point lead may be more fragile than it looks. On the other hand, among those “persuadables” who voted in 2012, Obama won by 19 points (54% to 35%). These largely undecided voters are especially likely to disapprove of the job the president is doing (58% disapprove), but are especially likely to approve of his handling of the economy (64%). These voters need more information about how Trump and his actions as president have harmed people like them, while putting big corporations and the wealthy first.
Winning over many swing voters will be an essential task for Democrats in 2020, but there is also a critical share of “turnout voters” in the Florida electorate that lean towards the Democrats but sat out the election in 2016. These voters are nearly universal in their disapproval of Donald Trump (74% “strongly” disapprove of Trump), and two thirds (64%) already say they are paying more attention to politics than four years ago, a reminder that the president alone is likely to be a powerful motivator for many new voters, as he was in the 2018 midterms. However, only 28% of turnout voters say they are extremely motivated and enthusiastic about voting, compared to 62% of voters in the “likely voter” Democratic base. Most concerning for Democrats, just 34% of these turnout targets believe their vote “matters a lot” for who wins in 2020 – for comparison, fully two thirds (68%) of Republican base voters believe their vote matters a lot. In other words, dislike for Trump alone will not be enough to turn many of these voters out, and progressives must continue to engage them on the issues important to them, while also making the case that Florida is a decisive state where every vote counts.
The economy will be a defining issue in 2020. In Florida, nearly half (46%) of voters are “very” or “fairly” satisfied with economic conditions in the country, and these voters give Trump a strong 58-point lead against a generic Democrat. On the other hand, a Democratic candidate starts out with a strong 35-point lead among voters who are just “somewhat satisfied” and dominates with dissatisfied voters (+68), and these latter two groups move towards Democrats after hearing a series of messages about the Trump economy. Views about the economy are less than clear-cut with both turnout targets and persuadable voters. Specifically, while voters in general tend to be satisfied with their personal financial situation, both “persuadable voters” and “turnout voters” tend to be more dissatisfied.
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